The European Search Catalogue for Plant Genetic Resources (EURISCO; http://eurisco.ipk-gatersleben.de) is an international database documenting information about European ex-situ conserved accessions of plant genetic resources (PGR) within the framework of the European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR). EURISCO is based on a network of national collections coordinated by National Focal Points (NFPs), who develop National Inventories (NIs). Currently, 43 countries participate in EURISCO; its dataset presently comprises passport data of approximately 1.130 million accessions belonging to more than 5,500 plant genera.

EURISCO was initially developed within the EU-funded EPGRIS (European Plant Genetic Resources Information Infra-Structure) project, and afterwards, it was operated and further developed by Bioversity International, Rome, from 2003 till 2014. In the frame of a tender for the hosting of EURISCO launched by ECPGR, the bid offered by IPK was successful. Since April 2014, IPK thus became responsible for the operation and development of EURISCO.

As a first step of the transfer, EURISCO was adapted to IPK’s IT infrastructure. This required both the public EURISCO interface and the backend (EURISCO intranet restricted to NFPs) to be largely revised. By September 2014, EURISCO became fully operational from the IPK website.

EURISCO will be continuously developed at IPK, based on the requirements and suggestions expressed by the European Plant Genetic Resources community, and with the aim of establishing EURISCO as a central repository for information on PGR at the European level, and of increasing its attractiveness for modern plant research and breeding.

An overview of the taxonomic composition of European germplasm holdings, based on EURISCO, will be given.